These days, it wears the same BA livery as most of the rest of the fleet.

Mark Harkin @ Flickr

Almost all the air crew I talk to say they prefer flying and working on 747s than any of the newer planes in the fleet.

JamesZ_Flickr @ Flickr

Of course, as fast as G-CIVP went, it can't compare to Concorde.

British Airways

Here's a good piece of trivia for you: what's the fastest commercial airliner in operation? As of Sunday, the answer might be "the Boeing 747"—not bad for an airliner that first entered service 50 years ago. On Saturday evening at 6:47pm ET, British Airways 747-400, tail number G-CIVP, took off from John F Kennedy (JFK) airport in New York. It landed at London's Heathrow Airport (LHR) at 4:43am local time—a crossing time of just 4 hours and 56 minutes, and a new record for subsonic aircraft.

Further Reading

Of course, the venerable jumbo had some help. Neither Boeing nor BA have rolled out a surprise engine upgrade, but Storm Ciara—a weather disturbance currently rearranging British landscapes—gave the plane a helping hand with 200mph+ (320km/h+) tailwinds. G-CIVP set a peak ground speed of 825mph (1,327km/h), although its peak airspeed remained subsonic at around Mach 0.85.

Virgin Atlantic actually had two of its planes reach Heathrow in under five hours from JFK on Saturday night, each an Airbus A350-1000. However, these planes achieved flight times of 4 hours and 57 minutes and 4 hours and 59 minutes, which at least allowed Virgin Atlantic to tease on Twitter that it accomplished the feat on much less fuel. Both times are still significantly faster than the previous best subsonic Atlantic crossing, set by a Norwegian airliner that took 5 hours and 13 minutes.

None of these times are close to those achieved by Concorde, a supersonic commercial airliner operated by BA and Air France from 1976 until 2003. In 1996, a BA Concorde flew the same JFK-LHR route in just 2 hours and 52 minutes, cruising at Mach 2. And even that's not the fastest transatlantic crossing by an air-breathing aircraft that we know of. In 1974, an SR-71 flew between the two cities in a mere 1 hour and 54 minutes, although pedants might disqualify it, as it did not take off from JFK nor land at Heathrow.

221 Reader Comments

Regarding the text for Picture 5, have they specified a main reason, or set of reasons, as to why they prefer flying and working on a 747 vs. anything newer? I can't say I've had the privilege of flying on a 747, mainly 737s, 777s, etc. A design ethos from before US airlines were deregulated in 1978, which I presume entails not cramming people in so densely it's amazing we don't form neutron stars? More robust design in general? Something I'm completely unaware of? Legitimately curious.

Just spitballing, but while modern engines have proven quite reliable and 2-engine planes regularly fly extremely long distances with few problems....my guess is having 4 engines for ocean crossing flights, even if it's just for piece of mind, is comforting when you're not the one paying the gas and maintenance bills.

Once you have highly reliable engines, having four instead of two just means a statistically higher chance of engine failure in flight. In either case, one failed engine in flight means the pilot will seek the nearest acceptable abort airport.

Yeah. No. Having one engine die on a 2 engine plane is much worse than having one die on a 4 engine plane. The whole reason the 2 extra are typically included is for safety and redundancy. Yes, the pilot will start looking for an airport to put down, but that is the entire point. With 2 engines, you would end up with nothing but dead weight on one side of the aircraft.

Virgin Atlantic actually had two of its planes reach Heathrow in under five hours from JFK on Saturday night, each an Airbus A350-1000. However, these planes achieved flight times of 4 hours and 57 minutes and 4 hours and 59 minutes, which at least allowed Virgin Atlantic to tease on Twitter that it accomplished the feat on much less fuel.

Pretty silly comparison. Of course the (comparatively significantly smaller) twinjet used less fuel than the jumbo quad.

I'm curious how much fuel per passenger? Anyone know?

It’s not that long ago that Virgin had sign writing on the side of their 4 engined 747s and A340s “ two engines bad four engines good” a sort of misquote from Animal Farm.

Still prefer 4 engined planes especially after a recent engine failure on takeoff in 777 from Qatar to Auckland- full fuel for a 17 hour flight so very heavy.

I didn't say they don't work, I said they don't eliminate the issue. I use Howard Leight MAX-1 plugs all the time for flying (and sleeping away from home, and shooting, and lots of things they're a great deal when you buy 200 pair), but the fact is that a quieter cabin to start with is a better place to start from.

Not like any of this matters to me. American uses those shitbox ERJs for almost every flight I end up taking. It doesn't get any louder than those.

I heartily enjoyed the one and only 747 flight I've ever had the opportunity to take. (It was in business class, though, so that's maybe cheating a bit.)

I've flown in them several times, and generally liked it. One thing people seem to mistake in comments here is that cabin configuration and things like seats/screens aren't inherent to the plane, but rather chosen and installed by the airline. You can find a huge variety between airlines, too, especially when it comes to First/Business class.

I found the A380 was a perfectly fine flight, too - though it definitely isn't as visually appealing on the outside.

I spoke with a private jet pilot once, and he said they generally only use two throttle settings: Max Fuel and Max Cruise. And unless they have a reason, they run on Max Fuel altitude and throttle. This guy flies private commercial (luxury jets), so not the same as commercial, but I wonder if the same concepts apply (two main flight configurations with respect to airspeed)? (Reading it over, Max Fuel is a funny thing to say b/c I think it means "Min Fuel Consumption" but I guess jargon is jargon).

They're both probably in the 80-90% throttle range. Gas turbines like to be run close to full throttle. If full throttle makes you go too fast, then you're feeding the engine too much air. Go higher so there's less of it.

It seems I will never be able to read any article about Boeing which does not mention software design flaws...

Flight control software design and implementation is one kind of software development you should not outsource...to India, or anywhere else.

They wrote themselves ONE MILLION lines of shitty code for the Starliner avionics, and now they find out the code has known and potentially many unknown problems and needs to be fixed.

Good luck Boeing. They quite literally don't know just how bad of a spot they painted themselves into with bad software dev practices. It may take longer to fix that software than it took to write it in the first place

The whole reason the 2 extra are typically included is for safety and redundancy.

This is wrong. With rare exception, on a clean-sheet design, you use as few engines as possible to get the thrust you need, N >= 2. If Airbus could buy a 180klb thrust aeroderivative engine, you can bet your bottom dollar the A380 would be a twinjet.

Regarding the text for Picture 5, have they specified a main reason, or set of reasons, as to why they prefer flying and working on a 747 vs. anything newer? I can't say I've had the privilege of flying on a 747, mainly 737s, 777s, etc. A design ethos from before US airlines were deregulated in 1978, which I presume entails not cramming people in so densely it's amazing we don't form neutron stars? More robust design in general? Something I'm completely unaware of? Legitimately curious.

Cabin crew say there's a lot more room to move around, particularly in the bits that passengers don't get to see.

I think the pilots like the way it flies.

More space, nice to fly, the feeling of sheer power and dominance as you sit at the helm of the second-biggest bird in the fleet, looking down - literally and figuratively - at all those turboprops and twinjets, from a vantage point higher than many of their tails?

And the 747 has *elegance*. It has *presence*. Its weight, speed, dimensions, and proportions match up almost perfectly with what you get when you optimize for subsonic performance alone, using the laws of aerodynamics and the properties of our world's atmosphere, without compromising for any given decade's business trends. It's unmistakable - the silhouette alone is a signature that, for half a century, has screamed "This is the pinnacle of air travel". An A380 may be bigger, but an A380 looks like an obese whale. A 747 looks like wealth and class.

And it is super noisy. Phallic symbols aside I'd fly an A380 any day instead of that dinosaur of a plane.

Regarding the text for Picture 5, have they specified a main reason, or set of reasons, as to why they prefer flying and working on a 747 vs. anything newer? I can't say I've had the privilege of flying on a 747, mainly 737s, 777s, etc. A design ethos from before US airlines were deregulated in 1978, which I presume entails not cramming people in so densely it's amazing we don't form neutron stars? More robust design in general? Something I'm completely unaware of? Legitimately curious.

Cabin crew say there's a lot more room to move around, particularly in the bits that passengers don't get to see.

I think the pilots like the way it flies.

More space, nice to fly, the feeling of sheer power and dominance as you sit at the helm of the second-biggest bird in the fleet, looking down - literally and figuratively - at all those turboprops and twinjets, from a vantage point higher than many of their tails?

And the 747 has *elegance*. It has *presence*. Its weight, speed, dimensions, and proportions match up almost perfectly with what you get when you optimize for subsonic performance alone, using the laws of aerodynamics and the properties of our world's atmosphere, without compromising for any given decade's business trends. It's unmistakable - the silhouette alone is a signature that, for half a century, has screamed "This is the pinnacle of air travel". An A380 may be bigger, but an A380 looks like an obese whale. A 747 looks like wealth and class.

And it is super noisy. Phallic symbols aside I'd fly an A380 any day instead of that dinosaur of a plane.

Imagine being a guy who assigns varying levels of status and prestige to different models of giant flying buses.

Regarding the text for Picture 5, have they specified a main reason, or set of reasons, as to why they prefer flying and working on a 747 vs. anything newer? I can't say I've had the privilege of flying on a 747, mainly 737s, 777s, etc. A design ethos from before US airlines were deregulated in 1978, which I presume entails not cramming people in so densely it's amazing we don't form neutron stars? More robust design in general? Something I'm completely unaware of? Legitimately curious.

Cabin crew say there's a lot more room to move around, particularly in the bits that passengers don't get to see.

I think the pilots like the way it flies.

More space, nice to fly, the feeling of sheer power and dominance as you sit at the helm of the second-biggest bird in the fleet, looking down - literally and figuratively - at all those turboprops and twinjets, from a vantage point higher than many of their tails?

And the 747 has *elegance*. It has *presence*. Its weight, speed, dimensions, and proportions match up almost perfectly with what you get when you optimize for subsonic performance alone, using the laws of aerodynamics and the properties of our world's atmosphere, without compromising for any given decade's business trends. It's unmistakable - the silhouette alone is a signature that, for half a century, has screamed "This is the pinnacle of air travel". An A380 may be bigger, but an A380 looks like an obese whale. A 747 looks like wealth and class.

And it is super noisy. Phallic symbols aside I'd fly an A380 any day instead of that dinosaur of a plane.

747 is one of the quieter planes. The A380 is the quietest widebody but saying the 747 is super noisy is like saying a Civic Hybrid gets "shit fuel economy" just because a Prius is even better.

Is a 747 is "super noisy" then every other aircraft every built except the A380 is "insanely noisy".

Last time when I flew a 747 was after the March 2011 earthquake in Japan, on ANA from Haneda to Okinawa.

The thing looked and smelled like the '80s wanted their plane back. Middle of the aisle CRT's hanging from the ceiling, bouncing wildly when we hit even the tiniest bit of turbulence. It was a bit spacious, granted, but damn those noisy quad pushers. Thank god the flight was less than 3 hours.

Breaking news. Airline that didn't upgrade interior of a plane in 20+ years has a plane which looks and feels 20 years old.

The engines noise levels on the 747 is quieter than modern two engine wide body long haul aircraft.

The 747 also has a higher cabin pressure than most planes. It's not an obvious improvement, but it makes a difference to comfort. Although while I was checking those numbers, I did see that 787s and A380s have higher cabin humidity, which might be a more important feature for comfort levels.

Yes, the higher humidity is a much bigger factor in your fatigue when you land unless you live in Phoenix and are used to dry air.

I got drunk before/during a regional flight precisely once. Never self-mummifying like that again. I had a hangover as I got off the plane. I don't know how people get away with drinking the free booze in first class without dying of dehydration.

An article mentioned the top (over ground) speed of the airplane. It was slightly over mach 1. Of course the airspeed was under the speed of sound.I was wondering what would happen with a 747 if it would suddenly find itself going at an airspeed over the speed of sound. (Yeah, I understand that this would be very improbable to happen, as wind speeds do not change that abruptly. Still interested though.)

Nothing good.

Supersonic flow even over parts* of the aircraft can lead to unloading the horizontal stabilizer, putting the plane in a dive, thus increasing airspeed more and aggravating the problem (including the risk of excessive G loads trying to correct the problem).

Forces on things like gear doors and fairings will exceed design loads, ultimately ripping them off, and also damaging control surfaces.

You do not want to exceed, or even closely approach, Mach 1.0 in an aircraft not designed for it.

* (local airspeed varies at different parts of the aircraft as air moves over the surface)

A first-person account of the DC-8 supersonic dive test noted that the ride got really bad at about Mach 0.96, but then smoothed out after breaking through that wall and wasn't bad after Mach 0.97 up to 1.01 (but it then hit that same buffeting at 0.96 while slowing down).

The biggest problem, though, was after they hit supersonic and wanted to end the test, there was too much pressure on the stabilizers to be able to pull out of the dive. The pilot had to dive even steeper at that point which relieved enough of the load that the stabilizer motors were able to be used.

I guess no major structural damage was done to the plane, since it was later delivered to Air Canada and used for 20 years before being demolished (I wonder if Air Canada even knew about its provenance).

Regarding the text for Picture 5, have they specified a main reason, or set of reasons, as to why they prefer flying and working on a 747 vs. anything newer?

All else being equal, I'd expect the largest planes to have the smoothest rides. You're also going to be flying the longest routes, and so flying less often (and the fraction of your flight that is high, fast, smooth, and easy is going to be maximized).

You might get a different answer from Japanese crews, who IIRC fly a lot more short hops in the 747.

edit: "So why not the A380, then?", you might ask. There simply aren't many English-speaking crews flying the A380. They very well might prefer it to the 747 if they'd had the opportunity.

Well, pedantically, all airline pilots (and air traffic controllers), at least, are required to speak English...

Regarding the text for Picture 5, have they specified a main reason, or set of reasons, as to why they prefer flying and working on a 747 vs. anything newer?

All else being equal, I'd expect the largest planes to have the smoothest rides. You're also going to be flying the longest routes, and so flying less often (and the fraction of your flight that is high, fast, smooth, and easy is going to be maximized).

You might get a different answer from Japanese crews, who IIRC fly a lot more short hops in the 747.

edit: "So why not the A380, then?", you might ask. There simply aren't many English-speaking crews flying the A380. They very well might prefer it to the 747 if they'd had the opportunity.

Given that the language of aviation is (by treaty agreement) English, all A380 crews speak it.

Regarding the text for Picture 5, have they specified a main reason, or set of reasons, as to why they prefer flying and working on a 747 vs. anything newer?

All else being equal, I'd expect the largest planes to have the smoothest rides. You're also going to be flying the longest routes, and so flying less often (and the fraction of your flight that is high, fast, smooth, and easy is going to be maximized).

You might get a different answer from Japanese crews, who IIRC fly a lot more short hops in the 747.

edit: "So why not the A380, then?", you might ask. There simply aren't many English-speaking crews flying the A380. They very well might prefer it to the 747 if they'd had the opportunity.

Well, pedantically, all airline pilots (and air traffic controllers), at least, are required to speak English...

I wonder if there's going to be a successor to Concorde.But I see there's no rush in creating one. Maybe the era of supersonic commercial flights is already over?

A friend of mine flies an MD-11 and I asked him the same question. He said no, not until fuel efficiency vastly improves.

But, still, you'd think there would be a niche market for the very wealthy for a few supersonic flights.

It was more than just the fuel. The Concorde jets were very expensive to maintain, as well. The demands of supersonic flight on the airframe are enormous. A big part of why they got retired is the spares ran out and no one had made them since like 1980. No spares, no plane.

Weren't they still turning a sizable proffit on those tickets? Had they spare parts they likely would have kept running them.

I wonder if there's going to be a successor to Concorde.But I see there's no rush in creating one. Maybe the era of supersonic commercial flights is already over?

A friend of mine flies an MD-11 and I asked him the same question. He said no, not until fuel efficiency vastly improves.

But, still, you'd think there would be a niche market for the very wealthy for a few supersonic flights.

It was more than just the fuel. The Concorde jets were very expensive to maintain, as well. The demands of supersonic flight on the airframe are enormous. A big part of why they got retired is the spares ran out and no one had made them since like 1980. No spares, no plane.

Weren't they still turning a sizable proffit on those tickets? Had they spare parts they likely would have kept running them.

but there weren't spare parts because the economics of the concorde didn't make sense so there was never an expansion in new airframe orders which made the fleet niche and cost of producing and supplying parts high.

It is all interconnected. Yes British Airways got it Concorde airframes from the govt for essentially nothing. Yeah if you are given free airframes you can turn a profit on just about anything and they would have kept flying it for as long as they could but that didn't make it economical.

Does the glass cockpit display show the 200mph tailwind as a big yellow boost arrow?

Usually it displays the indicated/calibrated airspeed from pitot tube data, true airspeed from air data computer, ground speed from GPS or INS source (what we are discussing here) and wind speed and direction (not sure how they get this, probably by subtracting the other two). Ground speed is true airspeed + wind + some trigonometry for angle between wind and course. All displayed as numbers on the PFD. Wind direction can be displayed as a vector.

I wonder if there's going to be a successor to Concorde.But I see there's no rush in creating one. Maybe the era of supersonic commercial flights is already over?

The Internet happened.

First, the attack on the World Trade Centre in New York happened. That wiped out a large fraction of Concorde's regular customer base. There were a large number of business persons who'd grown up with the sheer utility of being able to pop over to Europe for a meeting. They would probably have carried on doing so for a lot longer, even as things like video conferencing became practicable, had those attacks not happened.

The Air France Concorde crash didn't help either.

Also it was round about then that Airbus, then the Design Authority for Concorde, realised it needed a load of engineers to help finish projects like the A380, and they'd got well over a hundred doing nothing but keeping Concorde certified. The aircraft really were quite old by then, and although repeated in-flight anealing meant that the airframes were going to last forever it took up a lot of engineering effort. By the time Air France decided to throw in the towel and retire them, Airbus took that as a reason to withdraw DA support, leaving BA (and Richard Branson who'd wanted to buy and fly them) nowhere to go to keep them legal.

Still, one good thing about the Internet is that there's a lot of videos and websites about Concorde. And one of those preserved in Toulouse has been kept maintained; there's talk about heritage flights, so fingers crossed.

I wonder if there's going to be a successor to Concorde.But I see there's no rush in creating one. Maybe the era of supersonic commercial flights is already over?

A friend of mine flies an MD-11 and I asked him the same question. He said no, not until fuel efficiency vastly improves.

But, still, you'd think there would be a niche market for the very wealthy for a few supersonic flights.

It was more than just the fuel. The Concorde jets were very expensive to maintain, as well. The demands of supersonic flight on the airframe are enormous. A big part of why they got retired is the spares ran out and no one had made them since like 1980. No spares, no plane.

Not to mention an epic amount of spiteful airspace bans by US authorities. Stings when you don't have one of your own I guess.

I wonder if there's going to be a successor to Concorde.But I see there's no rush in creating one. Maybe the era of supersonic commercial flights is already over?

The Internet happened.

Yes....

People forget the reason the Concorde was seen as the wave of the future was it was the only way for high level business to be conducted face to face in a manner of hours in between a few of the world's biggest business hubs. It was a distinct advantage for a firm that could afford to take advantage of it.

Now everyone carries that ability in their pocket and would rather get drunk, take a shower, and pass out in their mini hotel room on a flight for the same price.

A lot of things pushed the Concorde out of service. It was far, far too noisy to fly over land, so the routes were super limited. It was exorbitantly thirsty, and fuel prices started to rise in the 1990s. And it was an airframe that consumes components pretty quickly due to the mechanical strain, meaning that spares availability was a serious problem. Oh, and it was a terribly uncomfortable plane compared to much cheaper first-class options.

Also, every few months, one of them would blow a tire, sometimes resulting in serious damage to the airplane, with fuel tanks breached again and again. The Air France flight that crashed in 2000 was one of these tire incidents and resulted in damage so severe there was nothing the flight crew could have done to save it. When a blown tire brings down an airplane, and it is just one of many, many similar incidents, maybe it's time to retire the design.

I wonder if there's going to be a successor to Concorde.But I see there's no rush in creating one. Maybe the era of supersonic commercial flights is already over?

There are two X-planes, the X-54 and X-59, in the works, with the X-59 scheduled for roll-out somewhere in 2021. Both will be looking into various methods of shaping the aircraft's shock wave to mitigate the sonic boom. NorGrum also has the Shaped Sonic Boom Demonstrator (SSBD), a modified F-5:

Yeah, I’m sure those designs would work great for commercial flights. The end of commercial supersonic air travel has as much to do with economics as it does with the annoyance of sonic booms on the ground.

I wonder if there's going to be a successor to Concorde.But I see there's no rush in creating one. Maybe the era of supersonic commercial flights is already over?

A friend of mine flies an MD-11 and I asked him the same question. He said no, not until fuel efficiency vastly improves.

But, still, you'd think there would be a niche market for the very wealthy for a few supersonic flights.

It was more than just the fuel. The Concorde jets were very expensive to maintain, as well. The demands of supersonic flight on the airframe are enormous. A big part of why they got retired is the spares ran out and no one had made them since like 1980. No spares, no plane.

Not to mention an epic amount of spiteful airspace bans by US authorities. Stings when you don't have one of your own I guess.

Given that it was engineered by the British and French, I'm quite glad we didn't.

I wonder if there's going to be a successor to Concorde.But I see there's no rush in creating one. Maybe the era of supersonic commercial flights is already over?

The Internet happened.

Yes....

People forget the reason the Concorde was seen as the wave of the future was it was the only way for high level business to be conducted face to face in a manner of hours in between a few of the world's biggest business hubs. It was a distinct advantage for a firm that could afford to take advantage of it.

Now everyone carries that ability in their pocket and would rather get drunk, take a shower, and pass out in their mini hotel room on a flight for the same price.

A lot of things pushed the Concorde out of service. It was far, far too noisy to fly over land, so the routes were super limited. It was exorbitantly thirsty, and fuel prices started to rise in the 1990s. And it was an airframe that consumes components pretty quickly due to the mechanical strain, meaning that spares availability was a serious problem. Oh, and it was a terribly uncomfortable plane compared to much cheaper first-class options.

All that.

I do suspect we are eventually approaching the return of a supersonic passenger jet. Whether it is private plane, or commercial. Technology hasn't been standing still and other posters have linked to some of the NASA demonstrators that could prove extremely helpful in making SSC travel more economical and practical. Same thing with materials improvements.

Now, I doubt we will EVER see regular, large scale passenger service for Jet Blue prices at super sonic speeds. But even with the internet and what not, there is still a need for face-to-face meetings and sometimes on short notice. Diplomatic travel for example as well as sometimes really important "handshake" meetings for businesses. Other reasons I can think of like possibly specimen/test transport (admittedly I have it in my head CDC test kits getting loaded up on a supersonic plane to be rushed to the front of some new novel virus that is spreading. Yes, I've got too much 2019-nCoV on the brain).

But it'll take things like airframe/materials needing to be way more reliable than the Concorde. Also a much quieter design. Both for passengers as well as those on the ground. Some of the sonic boom demonstrators might manage that.

I think we are headed two directions. The most economical possible air travel. Which are jets as light as possible, with the lowest drag possible, that fit the most people crammed in possible. Possibly going even SLOWER speeds to increase economy. And eventually for the select few who need it, a jet that can go as fast as reasonably possible.

If/when overland routes are possible as supersonic speeds, it makes a whole lot more sense. None of this transatlantic stuff as super sonic speeds. You can do Transamerica, transeuropean, etc.

I don't think the Concorde ever had the fuel efficiency to be able to cross the Pacific (that kind of speed is thirsty. Even with new and improved technologies, I doubt a current Concorde 2.0 could manage that at super sonic cruise speeds. Maybe using Hawaii as a refueling spot).

But NYC to London or Paris at Mach 2 is nice and all and obviously cuts a few hours off the journey, but you are talking going from ~6hrs to 3hrs. A savings of 3 hours.

But if you can go LA to London supersonic the whole way, you go from 12hrs to 6hrs. 6hrs starts being some serious time savings. Or Melbourne to London, which even if you had a quick fueling stop or two adding an hour for each layover, might be a savings of 10+ hours.

I wonder if there's going to be a successor to Concorde.But I see there's no rush in creating one. Maybe the era of supersonic commercial flights is already over?

A friend of mine flies an MD-11 and I asked him the same question. He said no, not until fuel efficiency vastly improves.

But, still, you'd think there would be a niche market for the very wealthy for a few supersonic flights.

It was more than just the fuel. The Concorde jets were very expensive to maintain, as well. The demands of supersonic flight on the airframe are enormous. A big part of why they got retired is the spares ran out and no one had made them since like 1980. No spares, no plane.

Not to mention an epic amount of spiteful airspace bans by US authorities. Stings when you don't have one of your own I guess.

Given that it was engineered by the British and French, I'm quite glad we didn't.

Does the glass cockpit display show the 200mph tailwind as a big yellow boost arrow?

Usually it displays the indicated/calibrated airspeed from pitot tube data, true airspeed from air data computer, ground speed from GPS or INS source (what we are discussing here) and wind speed and direction (not sure how they get this, probably by subtracting the other two). Ground speed is true airspeed + wind + some trigonometry for angle between wind and course. All displayed as numbers on the PFD. Wind direction can be displayed as a vector.

Way to kill a joke with “Well, actually...” pedantry.

I didn't realize its a joke because glass cockpits really do have a yellow arrow for wind. Shrug.

Working in care, I got to meet the lady who married one of the chief engineers of Concorde; she showed me her husband's certificate for being on the first flight of G-BOAC at one point, and the plane herself did a final slow flyby of the city to salute all the local engineers who worked on her. Also by the way, there's an Olympus engine at the SS Great Britain museum nearby, just to compare how fast technology created locally has moved; the steam ship's engine, a room sized, steam driven behemoth produced about 1000 horsepower. The Olympus? 70,000.

Other's have explained the economic reasons why the small fleet became unviable, but there's a lot of mis-understanding about the actual mechanics. The engines used a lot of fuel, but remain extremely efficient for the actual performance; indeed Wikipedia states the following;

Quote:

For example, Concorde cruised at 1354 mph, or 7.15 million feet per hour, with its engines giving an SFC of 1.195 lb/(lbf·h) (see below); this means the engines transferred 5.98 million foot pounds per pound of fuel (17.9 MJ/kg), equivalent to an SFC of 0.50 lb/(lbf·h) for a subsonic aircraft flying at 570 mph, which would be better than even modern engines; the Olympus 593 used in the Concorde was the world's most efficient jet engine.[2][3] However, Concorde ultimately has a heavier airframe and, due to being supersonic, is less aerodynamically efficient, i.e., the lift to drag ratio is far lower. In general, the total fuel burn of a complete aircraft is of far more importance to the customer.

And it's the speed that really sends the fuel usage up; there's no such thing as a free lunch, and if you're going to go faster, you have to burn a lot more energy to do it. Regarding the practual usage then, an author I often recommend has this to say;

Quote:

Concorde would burn 4,800 gallons of per hour at cruise speed. That’s quite a bit, but pretty impressive for supersonic flight. It achieved this by being able “super cruise” long before the F-22 was even thought of. The Rolls Royce Olympus engines only needed reheat (Brit-speak for afterburner) for takeoff and acceleration through the sound barrier. Once past Mach 1.7 it could cruise on “dry” thrust at just over twice the speed of sound.

My 757-200 in comparison sips a mere 900-1,000 gallons per hour and would carry twice as many passengers if it wasn’t full of boxes.

Since Concorde can cross the Atlantic twice in the amount of time it takes the 757 to do it once, we’ll say that both planes are equally productive. Concorde just uses five times as much gas to do it, and we haven’t even talked about maintenance cost.

Now you can see why a ticket on Concorde cost roughly $10,000 one way. Despite that, British Airways did manage to eke out a profit on some routes. I don’t believe Air France ever made a profit with the aircraft.

Worth reading for his wider look at other supersonics too, because comparison to the Russian Tu-144 illustates many other areas Concorde was technologically impressive, most notably in wing design. The Tu-144 could go slightly faster, but it had to have afterburner on throughout the entire envelope, so was horrendously inefficient and short legged.

But even in the 60s, the economics, and limitations over land meant that even efficient, well built Supersonic travel was always going to remain justified primarily only as issue of prestige; both national, and for those flying upon it. And one often unacknowledged reason those values stopped making sense was the end of the Cold War, as it wasn't felt you needed to "prove" your way was superior, and airliners settled back to just being a method of making money rather than "we can build it, and you can't".

(Air Force One is something rather different, in that it's really a mobile White House to try and protect command and control from a nuclear attack, and thus survivability, not speed is the issue)

And this is why it's extremely unlikely, outside of a major existential crisis, you'll ever see supersonic transport take off again; you simply can't beat the energy equation economically, outside of wider political demands. And why the "Intercontinental rockets" ideas of Elon Musk are even more ridiculous; the amount of aging CEOs that are healthy enough to enjoy rocket scale acceleration, and need to be in Australia for rocket fuel prices is likely to be vanishingly small.

Nope, Concorde was a beautiful, excessively well designed and engineered evolutionary dead end I'm afraid. Bloated-whale people-packers might not be romantic, but they are the future.

I wonder if there's going to be a successor to Concorde.But I see there's no rush in creating one. Maybe the era of supersonic commercial flights is already over?

There are two X-planes, the X-54 and X-59, in the works, with the X-59 scheduled for roll-out somewhere in 2021. Both will be looking into various methods of shaping the aircraft's shock wave to mitigate the sonic boom. NorGrum also has the Shaped Sonic Boom Demonstrator (SSBD), a modified F-5:

Yeah, I’m sure those designs would work great for commercial flights. The end of commercial supersonic air travel has as much to do with economics as it does with the annoyance of sonic booms on the ground.

There are currently plans for new supersonic commercial jets as well, such as the Boom Supersonic's 50-person Overture passenger jet and Aerion's 12-person AS2 Private Jet, both of which are aiming at the mid-2020s for first flights. While I'm not knowledgeable enough to really comment on their viability and ability to hit target dates, at least Aerion has an engine selected for their design, while Boom's doesn't currently exist.

Regarding the text for Picture 5, have they specified a main reason, or set of reasons, as to why they prefer flying and working on a 747 vs. anything newer? I can't say I've had the privilege of flying on a 747, mainly 737s, 777s, etc. A design ethos from before US airlines were deregulated in 1978, which I presume entails not cramming people in so densely it's amazing we don't form neutron stars? More robust design in general? Something I'm completely unaware of? Legitimately curious.

The 747s are definitely on their way out, but they still have value. This aircraft was paid for years ago, so BA and others can still extract value from it.

Regarding the text for Picture 5, have they specified a main reason, or set of reasons, as to why they prefer flying and working on a 747 vs. anything newer? I can't say I've had the privilege of flying on a 747, mainly 737s, 777s, etc. A design ethos from before US airlines were deregulated in 1978, which I presume entails not cramming people in so densely it's amazing we don't form neutron stars? More robust design in general? Something I'm completely unaware of? Legitimately curious.

Cabin crew say there's a lot more room to move around, particularly in the bits that passengers don't get to see.

I think the pilots like the way it flies.

That's all true, but line pilots and cabin crew have very little say in purchasing and retention decisions.

Regarding the text for Picture 5, have they specified a main reason, or set of reasons, as to why they prefer flying and working on a 747 vs. anything newer? I can't say I've had the privilege of flying on a 747, mainly 737s, 777s, etc. A design ethos from before US airlines were deregulated in 1978, which I presume entails not cramming people in so densely it's amazing we don't form neutron stars? More robust design in general? Something I'm completely unaware of? Legitimately curious.

Just spitballing, but while modern engines have proven quite reliable and 2-engine planes regularly fly extremely long distances with few problems....my guess is having 4 engines for ocean crossing flights, even if it's just for piece of mind, is comforting when you're not the one paying the gas and maintenance bills.

Those considerations are long gone. 2 engines are proven reliable on long sectors with no suitable alternate. Fuel is the biggest cost for an airline, and if they can do something for less with a twin, they will.

Modern engines aren't "quite reliable". They are ridiculously reliable. Most pilots will never see an engine failure in their entire careers.

Of note is that extended operations far from alternate airports are not limited by engine reliabliity. They're limited by cargo fire suppression capability.

Ive wondered on occasion what happens if a subsonic aircraft with a very strong tail wind that is giving it a supersonic ground speed decends out of that airmass into one moving in another direction and suddenly it finds itself with a supersonic air speed? Other than suddenly feeling like someone has slammed on the brakes could the plane suffer damage or even potentially break up?

First off, ground speed can never be supersonic, by definition. That's not how the speed of sound works. Mach number is dimensionless, in that it doesn't have fixed values. Mach number is the speed of the aircraft, relative to the local speed of sound, relative to the air mass it occupies. Emphasis on "local" speed of sound because the speed of sound varies a lot.

Short answer: Yes, but only in extreme cases that we know to avoid.

The aircraft only knows about the airmass it is flying through. If you leave one airmass, so to speak, and enter another, all that happens is you get a wind shift. If this wind is very sudden, you get windshear, manifested as turbulence. Windshear is simply a sudden shift in wind direction. That's why when you enter and leave jetstreams it tends to be rather bumpy, but inside a jetstream it typically is not.

Only the most extreme windshear, such as that found in thunderstorms, can be damaging to the aircraft. However windshear close to the ground is an issue as a severe downdraft can overwhelm the aircraft's climb capability.

An article mentioned the top (over ground) speed of the airplane. It was slightly over mach 1. Of course the airspeed was under the speed of sound.I was wondering what would happen with a 747 if it would suddenly find itself going at an airspeed over the speed of sound. (Yeah, I understand that this would be very improbable to happen, as wind speeds do not change that abruptly. Still interested though.)

Groundspeed was not over Mach 1. Groundspeed cannot be measured in terms of the speed of sound.

Virgin Atlantic actually had two of its planes reach Heathrow in under five hours from JFK on Saturday night, each an Airbus A350-1000. However, these planes achieved flight times of 4 hours and 57 minutes and 4 hours and 59 minutes, which at least allowed Virgin Atlantic to tease on Twitter that it accomplished the feat on much less fuel.

Pretty silly comparison. Of course the (comparatively significantly smaller) twinjet used less fuel than the jumbo quad.

I'm curious how much fuel per passenger? Anyone know?

Much less. Just very roughly on a longish sector, a 777-300ER will burn around 8 tons/hour, but a 747-400 will burn well over 10 tons/hour. Granted, the 747 can take more payload, but not that much more. The A350-1000, one generation younger than the 777-300ER, will be more like 6.5 tons/hour. Again, slightly smaller than the 777, but not that much smaller.

Supersonic flow even over parts* of the aircraft can lead to unloading the horizontal stabilizer, putting the plane in a dive, thus increasing airspeed more and aggravating the problem

Naively, I would have thought unloading the horizontal stabiliser would cause the aircraft to pitch up and stall ?

The aerodynamic phenomenon that typically manifests first as you approach the speed of sound is known as "Mach tuck". The center of lift on the wing moves backwards, which induces a pitch down moment. And modern airliners are definitely moving fast enough to experience it.

Countering this requires an all moving tailplane plus some flight control logic. In ye olden days there was a dedicated "mach trimmer" mechanism but nowadays the fly by wire logic simply compensates.

Question: If an commercial airliner is getting a nice push, then why wouldn't they reduce their airspeed to conserve fuel and reduce costs?

I was thinking about this last night when I read about this flight. I considered the possibility that they can't land with that much leftover fuel because of the weight. So if they conserved it, then they would just have to dump it before landing.

When the compute their fuel requirements, can they factor in the jet stream and reduce their load? Or do they have to assume no help? Especially if it doesn't show up.

Short answer: You can't slow too much. There's only a relatively small speed range in which we can fly at cruising altitude. Too slow and we stall (bad). Too fast and we go into Mach buffet (also bad).

Airliners are designed to fly in a certain speed range. You can deviate some, but not that much. Also, there are other costs. Longer flight means higher maintenance costs on the engines (typically charged per hour nowadays), higher crew costs and so forth. And even if we slowed down a bit, the savings wouldn't be super-dramatic. Conversely though, if you start flying faster than the optimum, your fuel burn can increase rather dramatically.

Yes, winds are most definitely taken into consideration during planning. Winds "not showing up" is not something that happens. Modern forecasts are quite accurate. You might get a little variation, but not anything that dramatic.

After a transatlantic flight, it is very unlikely that the planners and pilots would have screwed up the fuel maths so badly they're still over max landing weight.

Fuel dumping is only done in emergencies when we have to land immediately. In other cases where we might end up above max landing weight, we'd just hold at alttude and burn the excess fuel. This is very rare though, and would depend on some abnormal situation, not "arriving early".